Natural gas is a key energy source--and some lawmakers want to distort its market. Photo: Flickr/Anders Adermark

Last Tuesday, the Senate defeated a misguided measure that would have granted massive new subsidies for natural gas-powered vehicles.

This victory resulted in part from work by The Heritage Foundation and our sister organization, Heritage Action for America, to explain the flaws with the New Alternatives to Give Americans Solutions (NATGAS) Act.

Heritage energy expert Nicolas Loris explains the bill’s shortcomings:

By providing preferential tax treatment to subsidize the production, use, and purchase of [natural gas vehicles] as well as supporting infrastructure, the government picks NGVs as a winner at the expense of all the other applications for natural gas. The stated goal of the bill is to promote transportation-fuel competition and reduce foreign oil dependence and greenhouse gas emissions. It does neither.

“These subsidies create a dependence on government and do not allow producers to recognize the full costs of entering the market,” Loris writes with Heritage’s David Kreutzer in a post on the Foundry. “They centralize power in Washington and allow lobbyists and politicians to decide what companies will produce. They concentrate benefits to the industry and disperse the costs to the rest of us.” Continue Reading »